The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that bloggers and participants in Internet bulletin board groups cannot be sued for posting defamatory statements made by others.

In deciding a case closely watched by free speech groups, the court said a federal law gives immunity from libel suits not only to Internet service providers, like AOL, but also to bloggers and other users of their services.

The decision (http://www.courtinfo.ca....ns/documents/S122953.PDF) is a victory for Internet free speech advocates, who warned that a contrary outcome could have affected users of newsgroups, blogs, listservs, and bulletin boards who enter those forums to discuss the views of others. A loss could even have jeopardized websites run by students to evaluate their professors, said the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in friend of court briefs.